This might be heresy, as Baldur's Gate's wacky characters are the main reason many people play the games, but it just annoys me having to search out and find these companions scattered over the entire world, not to mention that they are usually not the classes or kits you want. Being able to create the protagonist plus 5 characters at the start of the game (as the Enhanced Edition allows) is just so much more convenient to me, not only are they MY characters not the developer's, but they all gather XP from the beginning, and I can relax and go through the game at my own pace without having to fast track to various locations to get companions I want.

Any other custom party BG'ers on GOG?

I always thought that was the forte of the Icewind Dale games. IMO, you're much more efficient and attached to your party if you can create your own characters. Although what bothered me in BG was not so much having to search for companions or chat with them, but that some of them could only be had in pairs. And since a character I thought useful wouldn't have stayed in the party if I had kicked out their useless soulmate alive, I had to resort to devious tactics and stage a tragic accident involving a bear attack... Also hated how Minsc would throw a tantrum if my priorities in exploration didn't match his. On my first try of BG, I actually managed that he not only left the party but attacked me on top of it, because I hadn't realize his quest was time-sensitive (apart from me possibly not even knowing where to go in order to solve it). I think that was more or less when I abandoned BG at the time (I started from scratch and played through it a few years later, but mostly because I wanted to play BG2).

So I can understand the preference for your approach, although personally, if I didn't know the game already, I would still be afraid of missing out, but for a second or third playthrough it would totally make sense to me to create my own party instead (it would also mean less re-reading of known conversations).

The recruitable party members in BG1 don't really have that much content anyway (most don't have any real quests, no romances with main protagonist either) without mods, so you're not missing that much. I still wouldn't play with a custom party, but if you like that experience, why not.
In Baldur's Gate 2 you'd miss more because of the expanded content for party members. On the other hand, many of them are annoying stereotypes, so you might not want to play with them either.

In my school days I had a chance to play (and almost finish :P) Icewind Dale looong before I've played Baldur's Gate for the first time.

So I totally share that preference, some characters (with specific classes) are "reachable" quite far in the game, which is even worse, because in this case you have two options:

1.Creating your character with that class
or
2.Deal with lack of some class for long time.

I can't say any of those solutions are pleasant, so I'm definitely preferring to create my whole team from the scratch.

This kind of stuff is working better in games like Fallout, Arcanum or Planescape: Torment. In first two games your character is supposed to do almost all kind of stuff and company is only supporting with firepower (occasionaly with different things). While in Planescape - well, this one is a bit tricky, since your main character is extremely flexible (so you can decide to change his profession during the game) and rest of your company is rather unique and almost all of them are useful.

Solo BG sounds rough, you'd probably need a Mage with a shitload of scrolls, and you'd still have to deal with how crappy mages are at low level.

Nah, that makes sense. Some of the premade characters are utterly charmless.

I never liked characters in BG.
They're walking tropes, boring to 11 and constantly bitching about somehting. Also, Minsc gets old pretty soon.

This is actually one of the problems I had with Baldur's Gate 2, how the game would throw time-sensitive quests at you when you're just trying to mind your own business.

(I rage-quit BG1 for a different reason: The game threw an enemy that cast Improved Invisibility at my level 1 party, which had no counter for it. With that said, I never liked real-time-with pause combat.)

I heard that Baldur's Gate 3 handles things better; instead of having companions initiate conversation, there's apparently some signal that the companion has something to say, or something like that. BG2 actually has this sort of issue, particularly with the lack of characters who can actually level up as a thief. Thing is, I *don't* want my main character to be a thief; it's not the role I enjoy the most. (My preferred main character role is that of a healer.)

One thing about Fallout and Arcanum is that they use classless systems, so you aren't constrained to the abilities of a specific class. (With that said, the skill point systems those games tend to use tend to overly favor specialized characters, at least until skill caps are reached; contrast this to games like Wasteland 1 and Elder Scrolls games (excluding Arena), where skills rise by use, making it feasible to develop a new skill for an older character.)

Does anyone know what attributes affect throwing weapons like slings and darts? I figured giving my mages and cleric slings might be a good idea seeing how few spells they can memorize early level, so they can do some damage from a distance. I figured strength and dex?

Yeah, there are a fair few builds which you can do, theif and mage are main. Essentially yes, anything under level 15 is fighters ground (it’s dnd rules), after that it’s mage territory. So you play bg1 as a fighter, then at level 7/8 switch to your main class. This means you can’t get to level 40, only level 39 n main class + the 7 fighter, gives you some more health/attack. Theif is possible due to use of scrolls, traps, wands etc. others may also be possible. It is difficult though, and some encounters you need to cheese sometimes, summoning for instance, but hat is common. My first ever char was a mage, and I got killed ten times by the first bad guy in candlekeep. First time I beat sarevok I literally lined summons up between me and him and magic missiled him down. Equipment is key as well.

Nooooooo. Imoen is a keeper for all time! Minsc is iconic also.

I think they're all iconic and a must play for newbies to the series, the voice acting is also really great (Interplay voice acting was always really top notch in every game they published), but I've played BG 1/2 a few times with companions so I figured I'd play with custom party this time.

Somebody call the Inquisition!

Seriously though, I never understood the appeal of playing a party-focused game (I'm mostly talking about RPGs) in which the party members have less personality than any random NPC. In my opinion, giving literary depth to its characters was one of the main reasons which made Baldur's Gate II such a beloved and renowned game. It always made sense to me, why would any writer or game designer want to miss out on such opportunity?

The original game allowed for this as well. If you opened a game as multiplayer. You could craft your whole party, then start the game, save and later continue it in single player with all the party members. I did this once but after I got to Nashkel, the game just wasn't fun anymore. I enjoy working around the traits and weaknesses of the party. I also liked putting members together that didn't quite gel. Having Minsc with Jahiera is well and good since they get along. But putting members in the party that always bicker is more fun. Mage is easy mode right from the.beginning. you can put virtually anything to sleep and auto kill sleeping targets. Once you hit level 5 lightning bolt makes you godly.